Crime and Punishment
by Dostoevsky, Fyodor
Published: January 1, 1866
Read: October 25, 2022
Review
Human. Dostoevsky creates the realest, deepest, most complex characters of any author I've read. He offers amazing insight into depravity and emotions with even offhand remarks commenting on the human psyche. Worldviews clash in this almost psychological thriller. The compelling story explores the darkness of man and the internal rationalizations and beliefs the desperate cling to. "You put intellect above everything like all young people. Playful wit and abstract arguments fascinate you" "Power is only vouched safe to the man who stoops to pick it up" "Why should he strive? To live in order to exist? Why, he had been ready a thousand times before to give up existence for the sake of an idea, for a hope, even for a fancy. Mere existence had always been too little for him; he had always wanted more."
Notes
Sister wouldn’t marry for money for herself but she would do it for her brother
Religion says love your neighbor and tear your coat in half, science says love yourself and keep your coat while
“Talk nonsense but talk your own nonsense. To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s”
“A normal man it is true hardly exists”
There are two types of man, the ordinary and extraordinary. The extraordinary are criminal like Napeleon because in making new way they disregard old. Criminals. Extraordinary have right to bloodshed as newton could have killed 100 justly to bring his ideas to the world if he had to. ordinary through vainity often consider themselves extraordinary. Extraordinary “will suffer if he is sorry for his victim. Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great man must I think have great sadness here on earth”
“The more cunning a man the less he suspects he will be caught in a simple thing. The more cunning a man is the simpler the trap he must be caught in”
“But he was a skeptic, he was young abstract and therefore cruel”
“You are a man still young so to say in your first youth and so you put intellect above everything like all young people. Playful wit and abstract arguments fascinate you”
“Power is only vouched safe to the man who stoops to pick it up” defending his murder,, no one is daring enough “I only wanted to have the daring”
“your career is an intellectual one and you won’t be deterred by failure…you are an ascetic a monk a hermit a book a pen behind your ear a learned research that is where you spirits soar”
What was his motive? He answered
“His miserable position, his poverty and helplessness and his desire to provide for his fist steps in life by the help of the 3k rubles he had recokned on finding. He had been lead to the murder through his shallow and cowardly nature exaberated moreover by privation and failure.
“Why should he strive? to live in order to exist?!? Why He had been ready a thousands times before to give up existence for the sake of an idea for a hope even for a fancy. Mere existence had always been too little for him, he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was just because of the strength of his desires that he had thought himself a man who more was permissible to him than to others”
Paraphrase: why had he no killed himself in that river? It was a slight tinge of his conscience that pointed to the falseness of his own beliefs that pointed to a future change in perspective and future revival